Conflict Might Be Preventing the Discovery of Alien Life

Just to give you an example, in my book I talk about Winston Churchill. Winston Churchill in 1939 wrote an essay about the fact that there could be life on other planets around other stars and we should search for it. Now he didn't have a chance to publish it because he became prime minister and then had to fight the Second World War against the Nazi regime. So much money was wasted in that war. If that money was allocated to the search for extraterrestrial life, the way that Churchill envisioned it before the war, we might have known the answer by now. And what I'm saying is, this is just an example for how non-intelligent we are. We are not working together towards a better future. We're fighting each other and that's the answer to your question that we might not live very long. You're saying this as you work at Harvard and as you're writing books on extraterrestrial objects. Right. I don't necessarily agree with you. I think there are massive problems with people, but I think we are far better than the human beings that lived 2,000 years ago in that regard. And I think that we will probably be looking back on this day and age and mocking how stupid we are when we are more advanced 2,000 years from today. I really hope so and that's what I'm trying to... I think we're moving in that direction. Well, that's what I'm trying to promote, but I'm not necessarily as optimistic as you are. I think our cake is still in the oven. Let's hope so. I really want that future. But I'm doing my best, but you can see from the pushback to which I don't have access because I don't have an account on the social media. Congratulations again for that. I think we're moving... I think there's conflict, but I think for whatever reason, the way human beings operate, we oftentimes need conflict in order to make improvements. We need a yin and a yang. We need to give in a poll. If we don't have that, we get complacent. Why can't we understand the best path forward without... It's just like using a GPS system and it says recalculating. Every time we have a crisis, recalculating. So we recalculate our next move based on all the mistakes we've made. Why can't we be smart in the first place? I think we have biological limitations that are based on our ancestry. And our ancestry is filled with tribalism and chaos. We're primates. I mean, that's part of the problem. And I think that our issue with racism is the same issue that we have when we have religious discrimination or cultural discrimination. It's tribalism. I agree. And we are just... It's wired into our DNA. Now my problem is, why couldn't science, given that there are billions of Earth-Sun systems within just the Milky Way galaxy and then a trillion galaxies like the Milky Way in the observable volume of the universe, why can't the mainstream of astronomy simply say conservatively, just assuming the most conservative, not speculative assumption? We are at the middle of the road, kind of life. It's very likely that we're not unique and special. And let's just look for evidence, search for it. Why should there be a taboo on discussing this subject? That makes no sense. For example, astronomers are now thinking, contemplating new telescopes of the future that will cost billions of dollars to taxpayers that would search for oxygen in the atmospheres of other planets around other stars, because oxygen could be indicative of life, microbial life. I say it will never be conclusive, such as search, even if it costs billions of dollars, because the Earth, for two billion years, the first two billion years of the Earth's history didn't have much oxygen in its atmosphere. There were microbes, but the oxygen level was quite low. And then it suddenly rose after two billion years, half of its life. So not finding oxygen doesn't mean there is no life. And then if you find oxygen, it can be produced by many natural processes like breaking water molecules or other things. So it will never be conclusive. How can you make a conclusive statement if you find industrial pollution in the same atmosphere? You just search for CFCs. These are the molecules produced by refrigerating systems, by industries. If you find evidence for that, there is no way that nature can make these very complex molecules naturally. So I say to the mainstream of astronomy, use the same instruments and motivate them by this question of can we detect industrial pollution? And I wrote a paper about it. And the thing is, the public is extremely interested in this question. And the public funds science. So how can the scientific community shy away from a question that it can address with existing technology? When the public is very interested in that, how can there be a taboo on this question? That's the thing that really puzzles me. Now, I wasn't working in this area until the last five years or so. I was working in studying black holes, studying the universe. And I came across a number of ideas that led me into this rabbit hole, into this subject. Now I'm about to publish this book at a popular level, but also a textbook six months later that describes all the science that we have related to the search for life outside Earth, far from Earth. And I'm just amazed that it's not part of the mainstream. It's really surprising to me. And I think it's inappropriate because you look at physics, theoretical physics. There are lots of speculative ideas in it, like people talk about extra dimensions, the multiverse, supersymmetry, superstring theory. All of these have no evidence to their credit. There is no experimental test, not even thought about, like in the next decade, the next two decades. But these ideas are part of the mainstream. So you see physicists giving each other awards and doing intellectual gymnastics, just demonstrating that they're smart. And to me, that's an unhealthy situation in physics. You can do it in mathematics where it's completely detached from any application to reality. But in physics, we are supposed to describe reality. And yet you have these intellectual. So it's as if the physics community, some parts of it, decided that the most important task is to demonstrate that you're smart. And that is really strange to me because we're supposed to understand nature, not show that we are smart. Catch new episodes of The Joe Rogan Experience for free only on Spotify. Watch back catalog JRE videos on Spotify, including clips, easily, seamlessly switch between video and audio experience. On Spotify, you can listen to the JRE in the background while using other apps and can download episodes to save on data costs all for free. Spotify is absolutely free. 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